I don't plan on hosting the website, I just want input on what program to use to set it up - joomla, mambo, and any recommendations on a hosting provider.

I Like Kompozer for the software there are others that are better , but it is simple and easy to use.and I have found Host Excellence to be a good and reletively affordable hosting provider. They also offer a set of tools & templates you can use to get you started on developing your sight.http://www.hostexcellence.com/index.php/v2/pages.dspmain

Currently, I just want to set it up fairly simple. A way to advertise primarily to what I hope will be an expanding base of existing customers. A few pictures, some information related to auto maintenance and repair and probably some specials. Over time, would expect it to get fancier.thanks,

Hy,try http://de.selfhtml.org/You will find easy information about html, tips for software and also a set of templates for weppages.For a starter it should be easy to set up a basic-no-nonsense page in short time.

I agree that Kompozer is good and easy to use. I have one site that I do with Kompozer and another that I try to do with Joomla (consensus seems to be that joomla is probably better for sites anticipating lots of traffic). My joomla site was hacked a few weeks ago and I have still not got it back up. Probably have to reinstall joomla as the hacker changed the password. Even though I use both, I am not too good with either. But my kompozer site is functional and, I believe, always up. And I like it (and joomla) better than bluefish and quanta, both of which are a bit too geeky for me.

I don't really know the main difference between joomla and kompozer and would like to learn what it is.. I think joomla is hosted by my ISP and have no clue how kompozer is hosted. I think its just on my machine. I know it took me a LOT longer to get my joomla site connected, up, designed and all that. Still, there is a lot of joomla help (google joomla). I think joomla has much more support in English than Kompozer. So, as everyone seems to think its more powerful, if you have the time to learn it (or the money to hire someone to help you learn it), you might start off with joomla.

In any event, with those qualifications, my own experience is that if you are going to do it yourself, you should probably start with Kompozer. Right now, I wish I had done both my sites on Kompozer. Nothing against joomla except I don't find it all that intuitive.

If I were you, I would try to get someone to do your site (get it connected and all that) in Kompozer, while insisting that whoever does it bring you along so that eventually you can edit and update it yourself.

Finally, I would listen to about anyone else on this. There are probably only two or three people in the world who know less about web-site development than me. And likely none, knowing so little, who would venture to offer advice.

In response to making your computer a web server, your ISP will not look too kindly if you have whatever home account they offer. I did have Apache on my XP machine, but when they cable company turned off the Internet and then reconnected it, they uninstalled it.